Skellefteå museum to use service design to respond to changing visitor behaviors

Hello Future collaborated with Skellefteå museum and Interactive Institute Swedish ICT to apply user-centered and service design methods to create targeted experience and service concepts for museum visitors. The result of the project was a number of visual concepts for interactive museum experiences, all designed specifically for implementation at Skellefteå museum and aimed at meeting changing behaviors among the specific target groups.

”Our project with Hello Future provided a nice mix of our own approach along with new digital experiences. We collaborated across generations and disciplines with respect, and I will remember the project fondly”

Annika Sander, Head of department, Skellefteå museum

Challenges

Many museums and public spaces struggle to remain innovative and relevant in a digital environment. Skellefteå museum recognized the fact that digital technology is changing people’s behaviors, needs and preferences.

Younger people, in particular, use new apps and services a development which has led to new challenges for the museum. Skellefteå museum wanted to investigate opportunities of how to use new technology to remain relevant to younger audiences.

How Hello Future helped

To uncover the opportunities and challenges within the specific context of Skellefteå museum we applied a two-step approach, to make sure both user and organizational perspectives were considered in the design process.

1. The organization

As a first step, we conducted interviews with key persons within the organization to give us a deeper understanding of the museum’s ambitions and objectives, as well as the staff’s experience of managing and using digital services. In a number of workshops and focus groups with the museum staff, we identified a description of the two most important strategic target groups: First-time visitors and school children aged 9-12.

2. The users

To create insights about these target groups, and how to design for them we applied a combination of qualitative attitude research and behavior research. We carried out ethnographic observations, interviews and co-creation workshops as described below:

Personas

To capture and visualize the large amounts of knowledge and insights generated in the user research phase, we created a number of personas - representations of the needs and preferences of the key target groups - based on the research material. These personas were valuable throughout the rest of the design process where they were used to make sure real end-user needs were always being met.

Prototyping

Using the ideas, needs and preferences that were identified in the user research phase, a number of concepts were developed through an iterative design process:

Concept ideation

Validation of concepts towards personas

Selection of concepts to prototype

Prototype creation (in this case visual representations of concepts)

Evaluation of prototypes towards personas

Repeat of step 4, or documentation of prototype as an in-depth description of the concept as well as visual representation.

The key to successful service design is balancing the needs of users, and the capacity of the organization providing the services. Hello Future’s service design methodology allows organizations to put their end users at the center of everything they do and to test new concepts before they are released. By combining the customer-centric perspective with insights about the organization and its capabilities, service design methodology ensures solutions that not only covers the most important user needs, but also are manageable and useful for the organization.

Results

The result of the project was a number of visual concepts for interactive museum experiences, all designed specifically for implementation at Skellefteå museum and aiming to meet changing behaviors among the specific target groups. The concept covers a broad spectrum of experiences, ranging from a new CMS for physical/virtual integrated museum environments, to an interactive system to control virtual content connected to physical objects.

Hello!

Do you want to know more about our product and service design offers?
Contact Leif Rehnström, leif@hellofuture.se

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